Seeds from the Clipboard • Jonathan Olazo

Nov 13 to Dec 4, 2015 • Tall Gallery

Currently working on paintings that combine various painting techniques involving the use of acrylic paints, lacquered stencils, and found objects, Olazo has set out to work on variations on seed ideas and inspirations that have consistently found its way onto the proverbial painter’s thematic clipboard.

For Olazo, working with these various materials at the same time reinforces the idea of painting’s object-hood, in that painting has come to its own without the story-telling function that has always been attached to it. Yet, in a side-step, this same objectivity and self-reflex has assumed its own story-making in that its own images and iconography has made it possible to begin a new set of connotative meanings and lexicon. Olazo has sought to explore these in lieu of pressing themes that have been constant pre-occupations, and concurrently, most are borrowed and taken from the artist’s father’s own clipboard of ideas. Among these is the “wordless book”, which features the image of colors that tell of the great Bible story, and the personal appropriation of the mythical “Spolarium” by Juan Luna, that remains to be one of the enduring narratives of Philippine painting.These have been tackled in Olazo’s off-tangent and many-degrees-removed strategies and sees the whole project as a private and meaningful homage.